How To Pick Which Parts to Buy

PC Part Picker

The best tool to use to pick your parts is pcpartpicker.com. Here you can select parts one at a time for your build and it will make sure every part you select will actually go together. It can also sort by many different criteria so you can find exactly the part you need.

CPU

The CPU is the chip that runs the entire computer. This is one of the most important choices you can make when picking out parts to buy. CPU's usually aren't cheap, and the choice you make here will actually influence some of the other parts you buy later on down the line. If you aren't planning on playing intensive games, or don't want to shell out the money for a graphics card, you'll have to pick a CPU with integrated graphics. A lot of CPU's you can buy don't come with the ability to output any graphics. If you are planning on buying a graphics card, that won't matter to you.

Motherboard

The Motherboard should be picked out after the CPU. This is because there are two types of CPU pins that you will chose from, AMD and Intel styles. The motherboard has to be compatible with the CPU. You also will want to consider for the motherboard, in addition to the cost, how many expansion slots there are and how many RAM slots there are. The newer your motherboard, the more compatible with future upgrades it will be.

RAM

RAM is very important that you get the right thing. It has to be compatible with the motherboard first of all. Second, there are different speeds and size of RAM you can buy. I would also strongly recomend to buy a minimum of 16GB RAM for the computer. RAM usually comes in sticks of 8GB, so two of those sticks should be enough for most applications. If you can shell out the extra money, I would get an extra 16GB in addition to the first, bringing the total RAM up to 32GB. This helps future proof it a bit, and some people will be able to see a difference right away in application speed.

Hard Drive

For the Hard Drive, there are really 3 options to choose from. First of all, you will need a main hard drive that will store your operating system. For this hard drive, you should pick between an SSD and an NVME SSD. Do not buy a platter drive for the main drive. If you need more storage and don't want to pay extra, buy a smaller, 128GB SSD to house the OS, and then a bigger, cheaper platter drive as extra storage. If your Motherboard has an NVME slot, you can go with that type as it is by far the fastest form of mass storage.

Video Card

This will always be the most expensive part, and in some builds can take up more than half of your budget. You will want to get a really solid Video card if you want to play high end games. But you can get away with a used card, or a lower end card if you just want a starter computer. You will want to do a lot of research on your options when picking out a video card.

Case

The case is what will house all your parts. Check user reviews on the cases you are looking at to make sure the air flow will work. You will also want to make sure to get the correct size of case, as if you buy too small of case it won't be able to fit all your parts. The standard size is known as ATX Mid Tower. Most of the time the case is up to personal preference as it enhaces the look of your PC>

Power Supply

After picking out all the other parts, it's time to pick a power supply. Power supply's are measured in a couple of categories. The first thing you will need to do is figure out how many watts you NEED. Add up the required watts of everything that power supply will supply power to, and buy one that meets that number + 100. Typically you will be ok with a 500 or 600 watt power supply. The other thing you will want to keep an eye out for is the rating on the power supply. A rating of 80 PLUS Gold will be more efficient than a 80 PLUS Bronze rating.

Monitor

If you are building a high end, expensive PC, make sure you buy a high end monitor too. It is useless having a PC that can output 140FPS at ultra high graphics quality if your monitor is not good enough to display at that level. You also will probably want to get two monitors, as two is better than one. Trust me. If you need a high end monitor, expect to spend $200-$300. Some of the best monitors available actually can be up to $2000, but that's a little overkill.

Peripherals

You will also need to buy things like a keyboard, Mouse, Mousepad, Headphones, and any other accessories. These are all personal preference and you can buy as cheap as you want or as expensive as you want here.